Peter them dramatically stomped his foot, let out a clearly audible "harumph," then went about his day dreaming up yet another way to convince America that his chosen form of discrimination is, for the first time in American civil rights history, a social good rather than social ill. A real warrior, this one.

Thing is, I don't know one equality activist who has a problem with Peter's thoughts here. None of us are telling him he has to accept same-sex marriages, even if 99% of the population ends up entering one. No one is telling him that he has to see our civil marriages as in line with his personally-held read of Judeo-Christian acceptability. None of us are demanding he accept the reality of civil marriage equality if he and his blind eye want to relegate it to the realm of "pretend." He is 100% free to stand outside of various civil licensing offices in the growing number of marriage equality states (sixteen plus DC!) with crossed arms, shaking head, and "tsk-tsk"-ing lips. One must keep oneself busy.

What Pete cannot and will not do, however, is stop this speeding train simply because he personally wishes it were heading in a different destination. He's been trying to reverse its course for over two decades now. The fact is, Pete and his team lost (or at least is losing and losing hard). That remains empirically true, even if he chooses to pretend our wins are something other than the obvious.